If you are planning a startup with advertising as the main path to monetization you may want to think again.
This article recommends partnering with major brands as a way around the problem, but what it doesn’t mention is that the startups it cites are not B2C; they are B2B, i.e., enterprise startups.
According to Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia Capital, entrepreneurs are ignoring the potential $500 billion enterprise market in their effort to be the next Facebook, Zynga or Rovio.
“It’s shocking we don’t see more engineers and entrepreneurs interested in enterprise. (…) In the last 10 years, there have been 56 IPOs in the enterprise space that have gotten north of a billion [dollars in market capitalization] and just 23 in consumer.”
Some say that young entrepreneurs don’t have the business experience to solve business problems, but that isn’t necessarily true; no more so than assuming someone with business experience can.
What’s needed is the talent to see what’s missing, but is rarely thought of that way.
Most of us move though our professional and personal life accepting what’s there, but sometimes we think…
It would be better if…
Why can’t I/we/they…
I wish there was a product/service/way that…
Acting on thoughts like these is what differentiates entrepreneurs from the rest of us.
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Established companies often lust after amateur web sites in which they see commercial value, but looks can be deceiving and due diligence is mandatory.
One thing due diligence should always keep in mind is the old saying, “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”
Obviously, Internet Brands forgot that when it purchased Wikitravel in 2005 with an eye to turning it into a paying proposition via ads.
There were some catches, however, that made for an unusual business proposition, starting with the fact that Internet Brands had not bought the exclusive right to the material on the site. The articles are governed by a Creative Commons license, which means they can be copied and republished by anyone as long as a mention is included of where the material came from.
Another catch: workers who do not expect a paycheck may find it easier to leave.
“Forking,” which refers to appropriating content licensed under Creative Content rules, is completely legal, but it’s a two-way street.
This idea paraphrases another old saying that applies, “what is legal for you to do is legal for others to do to you.”
Which is what happened a year later when the Italian and German contingents ‘forked’ the applicable content and created their own site.
Now the volunteers are in revolt, Wikimedia is involved and suites have been filed.
I’m no lawyer, but based on the article I’m not sure what legs Internet Brands has to stand on.
Lila I. Bailey, a former legal counsel for Creative Commons, the nonprofit organization that created the open copyright licenses employed by Wikitravel, said Internet Brands was in a tough spot.
Ms. Bailey, a teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, read both complaints and said Internet Brands faced “a community management problem” and had few options because the people involved were volunteers.
There’s a lesson here for all and it’s best said using another old adage: what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, too.
Last Saturday I provided links to innovation based on thinking different; there’s more of that this week, with some very inventive solutions to common problems.
The cost of setting up shop for a budding designer is beyond prohibitive, especially if they want to be close to their prime clients in urban areas like Manhattan. But just as an interest in food and fashion often go together so the food truck solution adopted by new chefs is being snapped up by young designers.
Styleliner is among a handful of mobile retail stores in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and across the U.S that are hawking vintage accessories, sexy shoes and denim to die for in their haute wheels.
An old industrial building in Brooklyn is signaling what could be a small renaissance for local manufacturing. It’s an approach that could be applied in many urban areas by developers with a more creative and longer-term vision than loft condos.
A surge of young entrepreneurs eager to produce $7 chocolate bars made from hand-roasted and hand-ground cocoa, or build theater and movie sets or fashion high-end furniture for a connoisseur’s market find the smaller spaces carved out of these old factories precisely what they have been looking for.
And now the story of Tito Beveridge, whose career proves that rarely does one get from point a to point b via a straight line. It does prove that constant personal exploration is needed to get from, say, premed to computers to geology/oil to your true passion—even if it takes a couple of decades—which sure kicks a large hole in today’s instant gratification mindset.
I saw a motivational speaker on TV who suggested that people at a crossroads consider what they enjoy doing and what they’re good at doing — and to find a job where the two intersect. I had been making infused vodka to give to friends at Christmas, and I really enjoyed that. I thought that was my answer.
Even people who like babies get tired of the endless stream of pictures posted on various social media, but that is especially true for those folks who, by age or by choice don’t have any. Twenty-somethings fit that demographic and a group of them have provided a solution.
Launched last Wednesday, Unbaby.me will scan a users Facebook newsfeed for certain words and phrases that indicate that a picture of a baby will be looking back at them. (…)The service describes itself as, “A Chrome extension that deletes babies from your newsfeed permanently – by replacing them with awesome stuff.”
I love the English because they embrace the unusual, quixotic, eccentric and downright odd. Being pragmatic, they allow gambling (knowing people will do it whether of not it is legal). You can bet on anything if you find the right bookie—there is even a term for it—novelty betting.
The history of novelty betting in Britain can be traced back nearly a half century, Adams said, to a man named David Threfall, who in 1964 requested — and received — odds of 1,000 to 1 on a man walking on the moon by Jan. 1, 1970. Threfall, obviously, turned his £10 ticket into £10,000, giving rise to an ever-growing legion of bettors who are interested in betting on the obscure, unlikely and (sometimes) unimaginable.
We’ll end today on what I hope will be a thought-provoking note. How many friends do you have? Not Facebook friends, but real ones; the kind you would tell you need serious help and would be there for you. Take a look at why the further out of college the more difficult it is to form real connections. If this shoe fits then you may want to commit some time to finding at least one new pair.
As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Innovation isn’t always about a new product or service (on or off the web); it applies equally to a change of thinking leading to a new approach.
Venture capitalists have long been known for shunning publicity for themselves, while funding innovation by others—now they are funding both.
Venture capitalists are hiring full-time public relations experts to tell bloggers and reporters of their investing prowess. They publicize their every doing and thought on Twitter and in blog posts.
Adeo Ressi, 40, a serial entrepreneur with eight companies to his credit, started Founder Institute a few years ago with a novel approach to moving new companies forward on a global level.
For tuition of less than $1,000, students attend classes with one goal in mind: to create a fully operational company. In fact, they are required to incorporate before they can graduate.
Utilities are rarely seen as cutting edge when it comes to convincing people to conserve energy; but that’s changing with the use of everything from a fictional family’s story in a series of web videos to social media ego strokes and neighborly competition for bragging rights.
Motivating people to save energy isn’t really about the money, behavior experts say. Successful programs foster a sense of achievement and identity. And competing to beat your friends and neighbors at the savings game doesn’t hurt.
Mention mobile technology to most people and they think of people talking and doing stuff on their smartphones from playing Angry Birds to email to closing deals for their company while on vacation. Talk to the mobile players and they are far more focused on machines talking to machines—no people involved.
Berg Insight, a research firm in Goteborg, Sweden, says the number of machine-to-machine devices using the world’s wireless networks reached 108 million in 2011 and will at least triple that by 2017. Ericsson, the leading maker of wireless network equipment, sees as many as 50 billion machines connected by 2020.
My day job involves supporting people and ideas that have the potential to change the energy game. It’s about managing disruptive ideas and managing people who have disruptive ideas. In my non-Shell life, I teach leadership development workshops based on meditation practices. (…) I approached my manager and proposed a program that would bring together my innovation management role and my leadership development background. He encouraged me to build an educational curriculum blending the two because innovation begins with an idea in the mind.
“To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of existing ideas, then combining ideas that haven’t been connected before creates the potential to produce something new and useful.” –Roy Chua, assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School.
Research finds that innovation only results when there is a high level of affective trust.
…”cognitive trust,” an intellectual appreciation of another person’s skills, abilities, and reliability; and “affective trust,” an emotional belief that another person has one’s best interests at heart.
I have no research to back this up, but I bet affective trust is just as important to people with the same cultural background, but other differences, such as gender.
Over the decades I’ve talked with thousands of people and none of them were willing to take a risk or show their vulnerabilities to someone they didn’t trust, whether boss, colleague or spouse.
Finding ways to measure and improve affective trust in your organization will provide a sound foundation for creating a culture of innovation.
I have just one link for you today, not because it’s a long article, but because there are 32 parts to Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow and I think you will enjoy them all.
We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do.
When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. (…) Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. (…)
That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome. –Maggie Koerth-Baker
Monday I wrote how important it is to value all your people if you want to keep them, not just the “innovators” on your team.
I also listed the five prime traits of HBS defined “Innovator DNA”—associating, observing, questioning, networking, and experimenting—but what happens when an innovator doesn’t possess all five traits?
I am living proof that possessing one doesn’t mean possessing all.
I have the first three in spades, but lack the last two.
I know I excel in the first three, because those are the traits that my clients have raved about and tangibly rewarded over the years, but I was a specialist; hired to do specific tasks where the lack of the last two traits wasn’t a problem.
I don’t believe this is unusual.
I know many people who are superb at networking and discovering what people think or thrive on experimenting with an idea and trying out various versions, but can’t originate the concepts.
The question is how do you take advantage of the innovator traits people do have?
By teaming them correctly.
Much of my most innovative work is done with founders when working on their executive summaries.
I tend to associate what they are describing with things I’ve heard or read in other places and at other times and synthesize new uses or functions; plus I am totally a ‘why’ person, which annoys so many people, but the profs say it’s good—who knew.)
I often see relationships and usages the founders didn’t, but my hearing makes networking an exercise in frustration (on both sides) and I don’t have the skills and training required to validate the concepts in the field.
But that doesn’t change the value, because the founders and teams with which I work do have those skills.
Part of building a powerful team is the ability to take advantage of all the skills a candidate has and then filling in the team’s holes as needed.
“I don’t want to overstate the case. I think about 40 percent of people just are not going to be good at innovating regardless of what they do. And 5 percent are born with the instinct.” — Clayton M. Christensen, professor, HBS
First they identified five primary skills: associating, observing, questioning, networking, and experimenting.
First and foremost, innovators are good at associational thinking, or simply associating. They make connections between seemingly unrelated problems and ideas and synthesize new ideas.
Innovators observe things, then question why.
Networking is a skill that innovators use to identify and develop ideas by spending time with a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and experiences.
Finally, innovators are constantly experimenting.
There’s a lot more in the article, but I want to focus on the 40%, because I can just hear all the managers and entrepreneurs saying to themselves, “Whoa; I’m not going to hire any of those 40% people,” Or words to that effect.
And that is just plain stupid.
First of all, that would make 55% of the population unemployable.
More importantly, you need both on your team to truly succeed.
But that still isn’t my point today.
Please take as a given that you need both on your team to truly succeed (if you think it through you’ll understand why).
Now pay attention, because here’s the point I want to drive home.
You cannot run your organization with 100% innovators.
There are dozens of critical jobs in every organization that need the skills of the 40%.
Those positions require a focus on what is, not what might be.
With all the focus on innovation, the 40% is getting short shift. In fact, I know many who left jobs/teams/bosses they loved, because they no longer felt valued; they knew they weren’t innovators, so they stopped believing they could contribute and left.
Only a few of those bosses ever understood they were the cause.
If you had your choice of investing in yet another social startup or in a company that could turn plastic trash into oil which would you choose?
The ultimate recyclers’ fantasy is for people to stop using plastic, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. Berkeley proved that more than a decade ago when it stopped recycling plastic bottles believing if people couldn’t recycle them they wouldn’t buy them (have to wonder what they were smoking); all they accomplished was stuffing their landfill with plastic bottles.
The next best scenario would be to change plastic trash back into oil.
Oil for plastic trash is a dream that came true last year thanks to the ingenuity of Akinori Ito of Blest Co.
Here is his story as told at TEDxTokyo.
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(like this)
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
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Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
If you are planning a startup with advertising as the main path to monetization you may want to think again.
Established companies often lust after amateur web sites in which they see commercial value, but looks can be deceiving and due diligence is mandatory.
Last Saturday I provided links to 
Monday I wrote how important it is to 
“I don’t want to overstate the case. I think about 40 percent of people just are not going to be good at innovating regardless of what they do. And 5 percent are born with the instinct.” — Clayton M. Christensen, professor, HBS
